There's been so much released since my last post (Endgame is out on DVD now and on repeated viewings, I stand by my original review. Holy. Fucking. Shit.) so it was obviously going to take something fairly major to drag me out of semi-retirement. It may yet put me right back in, let's just see how it plays out.
Joker then.
This ought to be obvious, but this is not your standard superhero movie, even though it is absolutely an origin story, just not within the turgid canon of the DCU. Grim and gritty as this undoubtedly is, don't expect some sort of grandiose heist, ransom plot or otherwise convoluted scheme to run or ruin Gotham; certainly don't expect our favourite pointy-eared vigilante to swoop in heroically at any plot-convenient, damsel-rescuing, cheer-inducing moment. Joker has been likened to Taxi Driver and in a lot of ways I can get behind that comparison, although honestly it's nowhere as good. Critics have fallen over themselves to throw heaping lumps of praise around like so many socially disaffected monkeys in a particularly cramped zoo enclosure, particularly in the direction of Joaquin Phoenix and his emaciated frame. Is it justified? Is it really film of the year and a shoe-in for all the Oscars (including Best Foreign Language picture, probably)? Well...
Basically everyone I spoke to before I'd seen this came out saying how dark and unsettling the whole thing was; some needed a stiff drink, others needed a lie down in a darkened room, at least one was unable to scrape together enough words for a full sentence until at least a week later. While it is a million miles removed from the catoonish excesses of the 60s, the manic gothorama of the late 80s or even the gravelly-voiced edginess of the 2000s the only thing that struck me was predominantly that it was just a bit dull. Admittedly, it deals the some fairly heavy stuff; extreme mental health issues, child abuse, a blinkered society leaving the vulnerable behind, but honestly though, none of it struck a nerve with me. It was just a boring. If you swapped the murderous shenanigans for learning to paint in oils like Bob Ross then you have a fairly unengaging tale of a sad clown who finds a nice way to express himself and finally be able to live the life he was always destined to lead; instead you get a healthy dose of violence, some wild delusions and a denouement that is fairly easy to spot coming assuming you haven't turned away from the screen, too unsettled by all the darkness to carry on. I mean OK, yeah there's enough pairs of scissors to eyeballs to steer this well clear of Saturday morning matinee territory, but I just couldn't get into it. I'm not even sure how to categorise it; sort of biopic, (but not really) not a thriller and certainly not thrilling. It tries to tread the same awkward-to-watch boards as things like American History X, but it falls short and nothing even comes close the the curb stomp sequence in terms of eye-wincing cringe. There's a certain amount of 'did it/didn't it happen' going on as well, but for the most part it never gets beyond predictable and never approaches surprising; it's a clear homage to other, better movies but never really hits the mark for me.
Phoenix does at least do a decent job. His affected cackle is done well and he manages to not chew big holes in the scenery which at least keeps everything grounded. Is it Oscar-worthy? Maybe I guess, but I hold no truck with the Oscars in any case so, whatever people say. I'm not sure why he switched into a weird, affected, pseudo-drag queen accent during the finale, but I'm sure there was a valid artistic reason behind it, and it's not important. I've seen people say it's the best Joker characterisation ever, but it's third string after Nicholson and Ledger at very best. Better than Jared Leto though, but a two week stay in an ebola quarantine ward beats having to watch Jared Leto' s Joker so let's not get ahead of ourselves.
All in all, I wasn't really expecting much out of this from the trailer and I got exactly that so I'm not mad. It's not a bad movie by any stretch of the imagination, but all this 'it's so dark' hype didn't really play out. It's entirely possible that I've just become so jaded and cynical nowadays that joyless tales of human misery just don't light the old fires like they used to, but it seems to take a lot more than that to unsettle me.
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